Sunday, June 25, 2006

I have been doing some research on financial assistance for Muslims students and apparently I have come to 1 simple conclusion:

There is NO Sharia way for Muslims to get student loans from without having to pay interest!

This is something that has been bothering me recently because it affects me personally. Upon complete of my undergraduate studies from public university where the tuition is very affordable – I was and continue to be faced with a dilemma: How to pay for my graduate studies at an expensive school without having to take out interest based loans?

Ok, so I didn’t get any scholarships and grants from the school but still – many students who do get them do still take out a lot of loans. This predicament is particularly depressing for Muslim students wishing to pursue higher education because we cannot take loans out since they have interest (riba) components to them – even the Federal Stafford Loans have interest on them after 6 months of graduation and that means you better pay off that loan of multiple thousands of dollars within those 6 months or else the government will start putting interest on your payments.

Many students who wish to find ways to attend their graduate studies are forced to take interest based loans. I know smart undergrad from my school who told me that he knew very well that what he was doing was haram – but it was the only way he could pay for Med school since he could never come up with 30k in cash in a matter of a few months.

I knew that he was distressed by it and I could tell in the extra time he would spend in duaa …

All this makes me ask? Why don’t we have Muslim Financial Institutions that will help Muslim students find Islamic Sharia ways to pay for their education as opposed to taking interest?

I mean interest is no ordinary sin; its one of the major sins!

It’s a greater sin than drinking alcohol, gambling, Lying about Allah and His Messenger, Bearing false witness, Committing suicide, Wrongfully consuming the property of an orphan, and so many more…

http://www.themodernreligion.com/misc/hh/major_sins.htm

I only hope that one day inshAllah I can help in some way to resolve this absurd predicament facing Muslim Students in the West and even in many Muslim countries!

About Me

"It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself."